The NT canon as anti-Platonic answer

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Giuseppe
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The NT canon as anti-Platonic answer

Post by Giuseppe »

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mlinssen
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Re: The NT canon as anti-Platonic answer

Post by mlinssen »

This hypothesis, then, presents a possible rationale for the fact that, despite what perhaps the majority of scholars take as evidence for so-called “lost”, and/or pseudonymous letters within the Pauline corpus, that corpus, as a collection of letters all explicitly claiming to come from Paul, contains precisely thirteen letters; and jointly, to present a possible rationale for the “tetralogical” or “fourfold” character of what Theissen describes as the other “basic New Testament form”, viz. what has become known as “gospel”, a literary form which, especially since the work of Richard Burridge, is widely recognized as patterned along the lines of the Graeco-Roman bios.
(5) In other words, the question underlying the hypothesis might be stated as follows: Can it be mere coincidence that what are likely the two oldest collections contained in the New Testament (6), viz. the Pauline corpus and the four-gospel collection, contain respectively thirteen letters (7) and four bios-type writings, (8) given the fact that these two collections seem to evoke (and, by implication, to assign an “inferior” status to) the thirteen Platonic letters and, in particular, the dialogues of the first tetralogy of the Platonic corpus, (comprising the dialogues Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo), as that corpus was circulating, in its Thrasyllan edition, in the Greco-Roman world of the first and second centuries of the common era?
And I thought I had crazy theories
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DCHindley
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Re: The NT canon as anti-Platonic answer

Post by DCHindley »

Actually,

The author has his facts correct about editions of Plato, and there were in fact collections of Plato's personal letters included in some of these editions. The letters were a mixture of genuine and pseudepigraphal letters. Because personal letters, as opposed to treatises, tend to be short and sweet and get right to the point, some of them do ramble on I understand.

As soon as I saw this part about comparing the NT to an edition of Plato's Works, I downloaded the article.

Now I'll have to dig up my sources. Might also need to download some other articles I used to have before "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (my HDD crashed about a year ago, and found my backup thumb drive had burned out - boo hoo hoo!).

DCH
mlinssen wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 2:00 am
This hypothesis, then, presents a possible rationale for the fact that, despite what perhaps the majority of scholars take as evidence for so-called “lost”, and/or pseudonymous letters within the Pauline corpus, that corpus, as a collection of letters all explicitly claiming to come from Paul, contains precisely thirteen letters; and jointly, to present a possible rationale for the “tetralogical” or “fourfold” character of what Theissen describes as the other “basic New Testament form”, viz. what has become known as “gospel”, a literary form which, especially since the work of Richard Burridge, is widely recognized as patterned along the lines of the Graeco-Roman bios.
(5) In other words, the question underlying the hypothesis might be stated as follows: Can it be mere coincidence that what are likely the two oldest collections contained in the New Testament (6), viz. the Pauline corpus and the four-gospel collection, contain respectively thirteen letters (7) and four bios-type writings, (8) given the fact that these two collections seem to evoke (and, by implication, to assign an “inferior” status to) the thirteen Platonic letters and, in particular, the dialogues of the first tetralogy of the Platonic corpus, (comprising the dialogues Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo), as that corpus was circulating, in its Thrasyllan edition, in the Greco-Roman world of the first and second centuries of the common era?
And I thought I had crazy theories
andrewcriddle
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Re: The NT canon as anti-Platonic answer

Post by andrewcriddle »

One possible issue is that what became the standard orthodox Pauline collection contained 14 letters (due to the attribution of Hebrews to Paul) and the earlier collection found for example in Marcion had 10 letters.
I am not sure that there was a widespread 13 letter collection of Paul's letters.

Andrew Criddle
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mlinssen
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Re: The NT canon as anti-Platonic answer

Post by mlinssen »

I liked your first answer too. I'm not contesting the numbers, I'm having issues with the theory

On a side note, I am pretty good at restoring lost data. Get EaseUS, it can do wonders. But don't write anything to the devices themselves, never! You will overwrite data at random spots

Best of luck
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DCHindley
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Re: The NT canon as anti-Platonic answer

Post by DCHindley »

mlinssen wrote: Sat May 15, 2021 6:04 amI liked your first answer too. I'm not contesting the numbers, I'm having issues with the theory
The point of the comparison is that we may learn a bit about NT transition history from that of the Platonic corpus (maybe vice versa). It won't be a 100% correspondence, but interesting.

For instance, I wonder how scholars studying Plato identify likely pseudepigrapha or interpolations in more or less genuine letters. It is largely dependent on "style" (always subjective) and analysis of the use of technical terms (Plato used different words to describe the same aspects of his theories over time).
On a side note, I am pretty good at restoring lost data. Get EaseUS, it can do wonders. But don't write anything to the devices themselves, never! You will overwrite data at random spots

Best of luck
As luck had it, I had just loaded EaseUS onto my new laptop the very same day as the old one crashed while booting up to make the transfer wirelessly, and the rest is history. I'm thinking of getting a shell to use the bad HDD as a USB plug in, and maybe do a CHKDSK /r on it from the good drive. Only problem, old HDD was Win 7 and new one is Win 10. Don't know if there might be a compatibility issue.

Hopefully the crash was confined to damage to the boot code, not the file allocation tables (or the new name for it, which escapes me).

DCH
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mlinssen
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Re: The NT canon as anti-Platonic answer

Post by mlinssen »

Seems like you know what you're doing. One caveat: I've had issues with some cables which couldn't read a crashed disk, while others had no problems doing so. Icy box works for me

When it comes to speculating about interpolation / plagiarism, it is intelligent guesswork: grammar, vocabulary, style - it remains very fixed for anyone, and I'm using the same language in every language really: fairly basic, no posh words, and I have a few words that I use often, and some that I never use

But nothing is absolutely static, and 1-2 years ago I had never even heard of "eschatology". Exegesis? I use the first word now but will never use the second, and so on. Everything is dynamic, well almost everything then
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Jax
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Re: The NT canon as anti-Platonic answer

Post by Jax »

DCHindley wrote: Sat May 15, 2021 8:00 am
mlinssen wrote: Sat May 15, 2021 6:04 amI liked your first answer too. I'm not contesting the numbers, I'm having issues with the theory
The point of the comparison is that we may learn a bit about NT transition history from that of the Platonic corpus (maybe vice versa). It won't be a 100% correspondence, but interesting.

For instance, I wonder how scholars studying Plato identify likely pseudepigrapha or interpolations in more or less genuine letters. It is largely dependent on "style" (always subjective) and analysis of the use of technical terms (Plato used different words to describe the same aspects of his theories over time).
On a side note, I am pretty good at restoring lost data. Get EaseUS, it can do wonders. But don't write anything to the devices themselves, never! You will overwrite data at random spots

Best of luck
As luck had it, I had just loaded EaseUS onto my new laptop the very same day as the old one crashed while booting up to make the transfer wirelessly, and the rest is history. I'm thinking of getting a shell to use the bad HDD as a USB plug in, and maybe do a CHKDSK /r on it from the good drive. Only problem, old HDD was Win 7 and new one is Win 10. Don't know if there might be a compatibility issue.

Hopefully the crash was confined to damage to the boot code, not the file allocation tables (or the new name for it, which escapes me).

DCH
If Windows gives you trouble a possible work around might be to boot into a Linux distro like Mint and then scan your old hard drive. https://linuxmint-installation-guide.re ... /boot.html

A lot of times Linux will work with an external drive that Windows won't even 'see'.
Secret Alias
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Re: The NT canon as anti-Platonic answer

Post by Secret Alias »

As always I find Giuseppe's take on things peculiar. Why is this 'anti'-Platonism? Not that I am interested in his response. Just making an observation.
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Jax
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Re: The NT canon as anti-Platonic answer

Post by Jax »

Secret Alias wrote: Sat May 15, 2021 9:50 am As always I find Giuseppe's take on things peculiar. Why is this 'anti'-Platonism? Not that I am interested in his response. Just making an observation.
The paper makes the case that the 13 letter, 4 Gospel cannon was created to make the Platonic collection in circulation in the first century a lesser collection in comparison.
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